December 31, 2007

What is the Story of Stuff? ... a movie from from Annie Leonard, Free Range Studios, and the Tides Foundation who say:

"From its extraction through sale, use and disposal, all the stuff in our lives affects communities at home and abroad, yet most of this is hidden from view. The Story of Stuff is a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns. The Story of Stuff exposes the connections between a huge number of environmental and social issues, and calls us together to create a more sustainable and just world."

They produced a Flash move with nice interactive features and a QuickTime version. Here's the teaser on hidden costs:

"Psychologist Barry Schwartz takes aim at a central belief of western societies: that freedom of choice leads to personal happiness. In Schwartz's estimation, all that choice is making us miserable. We set unreasonably high expectations, question our choices before we even make them, and blame our failures entirely on ourselves. His relatable examples, from consumer products (jeans, TVs, salad dressings) to lifestyle choices (where to live, what job to take, whom and when to marry), underscore this central point: Too many choices undermine happiness."

Update: Apple's "secret" presentation caused a minor stir as the secret aspect amplified the importance of the event for the Apple Insider. This was clarified a bit in The Edit Blog comments. What Apple might be presenting still isn’t known -- so they could still bring the sex as Stu Maschwitz might say.

December 28, 2007

A new After Effects site from David Basulto called AEUsers.com has appeared. So far it there seems to be no practical information there, just press release feeds with a whole lotta ads. There was a blinkx video search engine box:

December 27, 2007

"Ekirch kept finding references to something called 'first sleep' in medieval texts. The term was never defined, suggesting that contemporary readers were already familiar with it. But Ekirch was at a loss.

Meanwhile, Wehr was bringing people into the Maryland woods and putting them to bed at dusk, wondering how the absence of artificial light would affect their biological clocks during long winter nights. As his experiment went on, an unexpected pattern emerged. Subjects were getting the eight hours of sleep long thought to be normal, but it came in two shifts. In between was a period of unusual wakefulness lasting an hour or two. Wehr characterized it as a sort of 'altered consciousness.' Subjects typically reported feeling something like bliss.

Fragmented sleep is typically viewed as a disorder, and as Warren points out, there are now medications designed to provide eight hours of uninterrupted sleep. But as Ekirch realized upon learning of Wehr's experiment, segmented sleep may actually have been the norm for humanity until the invention of the lightbulb.

Warren repeats Wehr's protocol to give his account of this forgotten state of mind, and also delves into the practice of lucid dreaming - in which the dreamer awakens just enough to control the proceedings.

Gradually, his pursuit for neurological 'special effects' morphs into a penetrating inquiry into the nature of consciousness itself."

December 24, 2007

Here's a basic overview of video on the web & Adobe with a few twists I hadn't heard; and comments from John Dowdell:

"W3C: Lynch on video: A 20-minute video interview with Adobe's Chief Software Architect, Kevin Lynch, at the W3C Video on the Web Workshop earlier this month. I haven't listened to it yet, but it likely follows the Adobe position paper submitted to the conference: video needs extend beyond HTML browsers; we need improvement in metadata, search, quoting, text tracks, distribution controls, and delivery to multiple devices; and Adobe has no objections to a VIDEO tag if the browsers change to invoke the user's choice of video engine that way: "[It would be useful to] establish video as a top level element in HTML, and support mapping to player technology. This could be approached even more generally, to enable better integration of technologies such as Flash Player with the HTML document object model." More position papers are here, and there are additional video interviews with the W3C's Steve Bratt and Doug Schepers."

The Snog Blog has a nice interview with Cheshire Dave, the writer/director of Etched in Stone and Behind the Typeface.Helvetica, however, gets a big balanced treatment with a touring film, now at The Roxie in San Francisco (thanks SF Chron review). There's also a DVD, which you can rent at finer video stores like Into Video (Upper Haight & Hayes Valley). Here's a sample:

December 19, 2007

"In order to give the After Effects team some time make additional quality improvements, we've decided to [wait to] release the 8.0.2 update until mid-January 2008. We know that many of you are looking forward to the P2 and Leopard compatibility in this release, so we'll have it to you as soon as as it's ready!"

At a recent SF Cutters meeting, it was noted that much of the business of Phoenix Editorial has shifted to web video (especially HD). It seems that companies want to create video that can go viral, which would seem to be the art of astroturfing (as opposed to grassroots). And like the rest of the web, there are exploits to raise ratings (like on Viral Video Chart); see Blackhat Video SEO on Youtube - Boost Video Views for one example. Companies can also deflate as well as inflate; as noted by NPSC Blog: "Another blogger details how the San Francisco Chronicle uses software to continue to display deleted comments to the people who posted them, leaving them completely unaware that their views have been hidden from everyone else that visits the site. Subsequent commenters to the post then reveal that other sites are using similar techniques."Camcorderinfo'sHow Video Goes Viral does note some tips on how to propel video into viral territory. These were summarized from an interview from a CNN video show below:

1. Keep the video short.

2. Design the video for remixing like “The Dramatic Hamster” to allow other viewers to customize it.

3. Don’t make the video an outright ad.

4. Make it shocking.

5. Share the video via social networks like MySpace and Facebook and through e-mail lists.

"Over the past year, I have run clandestine marketing campaigns meant to ensure that promotional videos become truly viral, as these examples have become in the extreme. In this post, I will share some of the techniques I use to do my job: to get at least 100,000 people to watch my clients’ “viral” videos.

Secret #1: Not all viral videos are what they seem2. Content is NOT King3. Core Strategy: Getting onto the “Most Viewed” page4. Title Optimization5. Thumbnail Optimization6. Commenting: Having a conversation with yourself7. Releasing all videos simultaneously8. Strategic Tagging: Leading viewers down the rabbit hole9. Metrics/Tracking: How we measure effectiveness"

The comments on this article were quite lively, for example Fleet Street PR later presented a starker summary of some of Greenberg's other tactics:

The Street Productions has some free training videos as well as DVDs for Combustion 2008, compositing software from Autodesk. Back from what seemed the brink of death, Combustion is in many ways more powerful than After Effects -- it's as if Adobe had bought, upgraded, and integrated Commotion into AE (instead of Commotion languishing in a DVE engineer's cube at Pinnacle). Though the rendering engine and other features like nodes are enticing, I'm not sure it's worth more than a peak if you're invested in AE (check out the responses to the release on fxguide). Anway, here's the blurb from TSP:

"The tutorials cover all the new UI improvements and workflow such as being able to drag the size of the workspace panel and the control panels in the UI. Drag and drop operators from the workspace panel to a viewport to target that operator, playing back multiple viewports synchronized plus others. Then there is a tutorial on the new schematic improvements which I think anyone who uses the schematic a lot is going to love. ...these lessons are the exact same ones that are now shipping with my Combustion 2008 Complete DVD set"

December 17, 2007

Michael Pollan has an interesting article in The New York Times Magazine which manages to mention swine, almonds,antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria, and the Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus that's been implicated in Bee Colony Collapse Disorder. Here's an excerpt of Our Decrepit Food Factories:

"For years now, critics have been speaking of modern industrial agriculture as “unsustainable” in precisely these terms, though what form the “breakdown” might take or when it might happen has never been certain. Would the aquifers run dry? The pesticides stop working? The soil lose its fertility? All these breakdowns have been predicted and they may yet come to pass. But if a system is unsustainable — if its workings offend the rules of nature — the cracks and signs of breakdown may show up in the most unexpected times and places. Two stories in the news this year, stories that on their faces would seem to have nothing to do with each other let alone with agriculture, may point to an imminent breakdown in the way we’re growing food today."Update: in The San Francisco Chronicle Magazine Carl Nagin asks, How Safe Is Your Salad?

Apparently, "new industry rules for leafy greens aim to protect consumers from E. coli. Farmers and conservationists question the science [and the common sense of the grocery industry groups] behind the standards."

Jim Tierney of Digital Anarchy posted about Eyeclops on his blog AnarchyJim. It's a $40 video camera with 200x magnification but only RCA out. It could make a good gift, especially if you get to play with it too. Just remember: God isn't one-eyed. There's more videos for this and similar products on Youtube.

Wonderhowto.com is attempting to share the passion and wonderment of discovery by offering over 62,000 how-to videos-- on everything from After Effects and Photoshop to remodeling your home and growing great grass.

Co-Founded by Mike Goedecke of motion graphics company Belief, Wonderhowto.com in still private invite mode until February, but anyone can sign up and become a member to use the site. There are a coupla blogs too: WonderWeekly and WonderDudes.

"Bill Crow, the Microsoft Program Manager for HD Photo (originally code named Photon) says on his blog[worth a look -ry], that the final versions of the plug-in for Adobe Photoshop CS2 and CS3 are available for download. The download is free.

The plug-ins are available for both Windows as well as Macintosh. For the Windows, XP SP2 or Vista is supported. For Mac, both 10.4 (Tiger) and 10.5 (Leopard) are supported. The plug-in development was done by Microsoft in conjunction with Pegasus Imaging Systems.

HD Photo, which uses an expanded color space named scRGB has the capability to encode high-dynamic range (HDR) images in a wider color gamut color space."

Also, if you have a Windows box and turn off auto updates, you might try Windows Live Photo Gallery, which helps you manage and share your photos and videos. This is an upgraded version of the iPhoto competitor in Windows Vista, and also supports XP and HD Photo images.

December 13, 2007

As momentum for internet delivery of TV and movies builds, it's clear there's a lot of money and basic rights at stake in the writers' strike. But there are more than a few uncertainties. Reel Pop notes and quotes a Shelly Palmer post on media business site JackMyers.com:

"Who in their right mind thinks that the 'number of video streams per quarter is a readily ascertainable number.' First of all, what is a stream? Is it defined as an open socket between a server and a client? What if the stream is peer-assisted? Does that count? How about progressive downloads that are abandoned before they are viewed in their entirety? Are they considered downloads or streams? What about downloads? Do they count? How about off network plays of previously downloaded material that actually has a reported playcount? Wait … there’s more. How about VOD streams over closed IPTV networks? That’s what the cable industry is about to turn into – technically every one of those plays is a video stream. Does it count if you stream data that updates creative on an HD-DVD or BluRay to change story arch or release additional material that creates a derivative work? I could go on for about thirty pages and not come close to creating a complete list."

Reel Pop has also covered aspects of online usage stats, noting that search for video is also important. Now for balance, here's an explanation of the groundbreaking new deal put in a way writers can understand:

December 11, 2007

FreshDV notes reports (Spout Blog, Guardian UK) that "Fox had struck a deal to produce real-life Brawndo, the fictional energy drink that threw the Earth into chaos in Idiocracy, a film that Fox barely released and all but refused to promote." Perhaps part of the reason for all this was that the Fox News brand remained pretty much intact (though more muscular) in the movie's dystopian future.

By the way, design in Idiocracy was fun; see "The graphic design of Mike Judge's Idiocracy" at SpeakUp andIdiocracy is Reality at graphpaper.com (which notes the "flat buns" burger commercial).Seen at the left is the movie's US President -- a porn star and wrestling champ -- at the "House of Representin'", which is sponsored by Pepsi. The Cabinet is sponsored by Carl's Jr, which devolved a new tag line, “F$#k you! I’m eating!” Video segments can be found via YouTube and Google.

At this point you really can't be sure who's zooming who. As shown at FreshDV, the Brawndo attempt to go viral mimics both Ideocracy and this viral video (one viewing is more than enough):

December 10, 2007

Over on Adobe Labs, there's a beta "preview of the next generation of Adobe Acrobat Connect, codename 'Brio.' Brio is a web meeting service built with collaboration in mind for individual professionals and small businesses...

Built on Adobe's Flash platform, Brio operates inside most popular web browsers, so you can start a meeting without worrying if others have a compatible system or the right software."

Brio has screen and file sharing, chat and whiteboards, but I'd also like to be able to record parts of the meeting and play it back right away -- so I'm not sure if this will fit the bill. A name change would make sense too since this has little to do with Acrobat.

from iTWire... "Adobe has delivered Mac OS X 10.5 compatibility updates for two components of Creative Suite 3. The Soundbooth CS3 update is purely for Leopard compatibility. The Premiere Pro CS3 3.1.1 update includes 'important bug fixes' as well as compatibility fixes for Apple's latest operating system and Adobe officials describe it as 'highly recommended' for all users. Leopard compatibility updates for After Effects CS3 and Encore CS3 are still expected this month. Other members of the CS3 family are already compatible with Mac OS X 10.5."

NAB 2008 has a similar approach, though the mindshare is red-shifted from creation to commerce, without Avid (see Capria.TV, Splice Here) and maybe a lower profile from Adobe (no logo on floor map). NAB: "...the mecca for those seeking to produce and distribute broadband video across the Internet, via IPTV and for mobile devices, is also where new content deals are being brokered ... between telecom carriers, broadcasters, programming networks and social media outlets..."

December 7, 2007

"I love how author David Bordwell launches into a topic and digs deep. One [in a series] of his terrific articles is 'Unsteadicam Chronicles,' from his website. I don't necessarily agree with his viewpoints, but I adore how deeply involved he gets with his material."

December 4, 2007

In the old days we had to walk miles through blizzards to pay for AE tutorials if there were any, but now there's tons of worthy free stuff. Video Copilot is offering their 13-hourBasic Training series for free over the web.

Adobe Edge is featuring a sneak peek video on Thermo, code name for an RIA design tool under development at Adobe. Flash the app is enervating for someone used to After Effects, and I've tried using it in every version since Future Splash Animator 1. I'm not sure why Flash never moved to the way of mTropolis with it's easy to use messenger model.

Thermo is the sort of technology metaphor I'd like to see in the Production Premium suite. Instead of limited templates for producing Flash versions of a DVD, I'd like to see new tools more like this, even as an Adobe Elements "Flash Toy" with only branching and looping at first, then migrating to more complex setup with effects and nodes/pipes/flowcharts. Or even better a reimagining and rewrite of After Effects and maybe Flash. If video over the web continues to grow, new tools that share creation metaphors and integrate media creation and interactivity could be useful. Aviary seems to be inching towards this with their RIA/AIR apps.

The release covers h.264/AAC audio on Windows, Mac, and Linux, and "improved performance through multi-core support for rendering, hardware scaling in full-screen, multi-threaded video decoding, a new algorithm for image scaling, and the Flash Player cache for local caching of common platform components to reduce SWF sizes and app loading times." Also, there's new stuff on Flash Media Server.

As noted here a few days ago, Tinic Uro previously mentioned a 'fast-start' trap on files compressed as h.264 in tools like AE and Premiere. For now "the moov atom (which is the index information in MPEG-4 files) is at the beginning of the file....you have to wait until the file is completely downloaded before it is played back. You can use tools like qt-faststart.c written by our own Mike Melanson to fix your files so that the index is at the beginning of the file." In Apple tools (or in CS3 with File>Export>QuickTime), you just check the "Fast Start" box.

November 30, 2007

School is website that focuses on training and support for SketchUp users. Designers Mike Tadros & Alex Oliver are trying to make it a support center with DVDs, podcasts (iTunes and RSS), and forums for tips, tricks, tutorials, and answers to questions. Check it out if you get the chance: http://go-2-school.com.

The EBN videos were all done in early versions of Premiere and After Effects; my favorite is "Electronic Behavior Control System," second in series playing below. To participate in your own manipulation, hit the forward button to advance right to this video. video via the Audiovisual Blog.

"In a post aptly titled “Why Adobe Premiere Pro is not suited for the indie filmmaker”, Titus Films talks about one of the major issues with the popular non-linear editing software; AAF Audio Export. The complaint is that the CS3 Production Suite doesn’t really offer a pro-level solution for mixing a feature film’s audio…"

I have a friend who records and mixes World Music performances and she has the same complaint. Using Nuendo or ProTools, it would be better if Premiere could export OMF. And even if Automatic Duck could be used as a workaround, the pull to Final Cut is quite strong. This is an example where PC devotees seriously consider emulation or a Hackintosh.

Tim Siglin at EventDV noted that Tinic mentioned a 'fast-start' trap on files compressed for download in tools like AE and Premiere. For now "the moov atom (which is the index information in MPEG-4 files) is at the beginning of the file....you have to wait until the file is completely downloaded before it is played back. You can use tools like qt-faststart.c written by our own Mike Melanson to fix your files so that the index is at the beginning of the file."

The Genesis Project notes an AE resource (with blog) for AE project templates and training that I missed:"Josh Fozzardis a wedding/event videographer [active in WEVA] who has dived into After Effects and has a number of interesting items you might like to look at including his website name: AEProjects.com."

November 24, 2007

Alan Shisko notes VectorMagic, a Stanford University Artificial Intelligence Laboratory research project, in his post Vectorizing Bitmaps. The Stanford site's comparisons between VectorMagic, Adobe Live Trace and Corel PowerTRACE are convincing.

November 22, 2007

The Box2D demos are fun. It would be great to have dynamics integrated with the Puppet Tool or eventually have something in AE like Motional Realms' ReelMotion, which had an incredible physics engine that used physics and collision detection to realistically animate vehicles and objects. My PowerPC version of ReelMotion hasn't seen action for quite awhile; the technology was purchased by and absorbed into Rainbow Studios, which makes games like Cars:The Videogame.

Stay tuned for the ticket news. Tickets will be $10 in advance and $15 at the door of all remaining of the 300 tickets. SF Cutters Paid Members attend free. Meetings have been held at dvGarage thanks to Alex Lindsay and staff, but the December 2007 - June 2008 meetings will be at Adobe's Macromedia building in San Francisco at 601 Townsend at 7th (bus 19 or walk from CalTrain).

Also, the Monday December 3End of the Year Party is free (but you must register) with AE/Commotion guru Matt Silverman.

And the January Macworld FCPUG SUPERMEET tickets are available too ($10 in advance, $15 at the door if tickets remain). This event also has great speakers and waiting lists for the last three years. There are currently over $12,000 worth of prizes in the raffle and going up.

Some applications like Adobe Encore create Flash .flv video files, but don't tell you details about the settings beyond "High Quality." I'd like to see more control over FLV compression settings and metadata in CS4.

You can get a bit of info from FLV Player and VLC Media Player, although VLC has problems playing some files, including ones from Encore. Version 2 of FLV Player doesn't always show metadata, but it is prettier and plays at fullscreen with Apple-like play controls. In fact even if it plays only single files, it seems like a better player than Adobe's own AMP now in public beta.

Anyway, you can find some metadata easily in Windows XP with FLV MetaData Viewer, a property sheet extension DLL which adds 'FLV Details' tab to the file properties dialog of FLV files. This tool isn't quite free of a previous bug mentioned in earlier post File info for FLVs. If the property sheet works you won't get as much info as possible though, like the stuff shown in FLV MetaData Injector, also from the Manitu Group. With this tool you can generate an XML report showing the share of audio and video data rates.

I think that the audio portion of Encore's FLV is unnecessarily large, and I don't always want a 29.97 frame rate. There's more on these output settings in the technote Adobe Flash export in Encore CS3, but I'd like to see more control over FLV compression settings in Encore CS4.

November 20, 2007

"As flat screen TVs become ubiquitous, vintage TVs look more and more interesting and unusual. From early mechanical TVs consisting of a spinning disk and lens (which look even better without an enclosure), to Sony’s original transistor TV and portable LCD sets from as early as the 80s. Here are some of our favorites from collector sites around the web." ...via Watching TV Online

They have other cool collections, like the keyboard one shown scrolling by here.

Even if you're intimidated by your boss and are afraid to determine ahead of time the nature of their capabilities, you still might find out anyway in a crunch when the boss plays Mara to your Buddha. I have a friend who was asked to develop a presentation (in Apple Keynote) and send a DVD overseas. Of course it would be easier to send a QuickTime file but the boss is the boss, and he's pretty certain he can play a DVD disc.

Our problem is now the busy boss wants to download a file but doesn't know if he has a DVD burner or the ability to encode MPEG-2 or burn DVD-Video. You can do all this with a Mac but the boss uses Windows, and in Windows there no guarantee that the DVD burner can burn DVD-Video.

Now is when you turn to Open Source and freeware to make sure the boss can reach his imagined goal -- and you start to appreciate the niceties built into your Apple and Adobe tools. Using a search engine to find solutions brings up a variety of pay utilities that are often worse than the free stuff. You'd do better looking through these websites that have already collected and organized utilities and "guides" to show you how to do video tasks with free tools: Afterdawn.com, Doom9.org, MBbass.org, Digital Digest, and Videohelp.com.

In this case, we're lucky to find solution #1 on LifeHacker, in Hack Attack: Burn almost any video file to a playable DVD. This article recommends DVD Flick and shows you how to use it too. This seems like a great Windows tool since you can import Windows Media or QuickTime files, convert between NTSC and PAL, transcode to MPEG (with FFMPEG), and burn a DVD or ISO image all in one step. An alternative is Avi2Dvd (freeware), but it has a distracting UI. I haven't fully tested either utility myself, but DVD Flick seemed to work fine.

Burning a DVD this way may be leaving too much to fate, or to a boss with delicate sensibilities. It would be even safer to deliver solution #2: a DVD image, which the boss can then burn to DVD or play it from his hard drive.

To burn an image on Windows, an easy to use tool is ImgBurn, which is really DVD Decrypter without CSS cracking. ImgBurn works great, but only rips & burns ISO images. If on the Mac you don't end up with an ISO but only generate a "VIDEO_TS" DVD folder (I'd check Visual Hub but the website is down), in Windows you can still use DVD Shrink (like Popcorn usually used to convert a 9 GB DVD to 5GB) to convert the DVD folder to an ISO image. Both ImgBurn and DVD Shrink have a clean UI and are very easy to use.

If there is a problem burning a DVD, you can turn to solution #3: the ISO file can be played from the a hard drive. This can be done in any number of utilities, but I'd recommend using the cross platform utility VLC Media Player, which can play just about any filetype around.

Of course all of this could be easier if somehow the boss could install QuickTime and play a QT file from his notebook PC. Of the course, then he'd have to know how to connect the laptop to a projector or TV.

Somewhat more difficult would be exporting to Windows Media, though the boss would still face transcoding and building a DVD. On a Mac, you can export to Windows Media with WMV Studio at $49. Even harder is using Microsoft free Windows Media Encoder on Windows, because it doesn't import QT files. The new Microsoft Expression Encoder (XP SP2/Vista) does import QT though and has an 180-day trial version.

Finally, there's intriguing but untried YouConvertIt.com, "the world's first and most complete conversion, file storage, units conversion website allowing internet users to convert audio video images and documents into an array of formats also sending or delivering file(s)."